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Arachne (; from , cognate with Latin araneus)R. S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 124. is the protagonist of a tale in classical mythology known primarily from the version told by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BCE–17 CE). In Book Six of his epic poem Metamorphoses, Ovid recounts how the talented mortal Arachne challenged the goddess Minerva to a weaving contest. When Minerva could find no flaws in the tapestry Arachne had woven for the contest, the goddess became enraged and beat the girl with her shuttle. After Arachne hanged herself out of shame, she was transformed into a spider. The myth both provided an Origin myth of spiders' web-spinning abilities and was a cautionary tale about hubris.
Arachne was not disheartened and boasted that if Minerva wished to make her stop, she should appear in person and do it herself. Immediately, Minerva removed her disguise and appeared in shimmering glory, clad in a sparkling white chiton. The two began weaving straight away. Minerva's weaving represented four separate contests between mortals and the gods in which the gods punished mortals for setting themselves as equals of the gods. Arachne's weaving depicted ways that the gods, particularly Zeus, had misled and abused mortals, tricking, and seducing many women. When Minerva saw that Arachne had not only insulted the gods but done so with a work far more beautiful than Minerva's own, she was enraged. She ripped Arachne's work to shreds and hit her on the head three times with her shuttle. Shaken and embarrassed, Arachne took her life by hanging.
Seeing that, Minerva felt pity for the girl, transforming her into a spider, which would go on to create webs for all time, as would her descendants. Minerva did so by sprinkling her with the juice of Hecate's herb,
And immediately at the touch of this dark poison, Arachne's hair fell out. With it went her nose and ears, her head shrank to the smallest size, and her whole body became tiny. Her slender fingers stuck to her sides as legs, the rest is belly, from which she still spins a thread, and, as a spider, weaves her ancient web.
The myth of Arachne can also be seen as an attempt to show the relationship between art and tyrannical power in Ovid's time. He wrote under the emperor Augustus and was exiled by him. At the time, weaving was a common metaphor for poetry, therefore Arachne's artistry and Minerva's censorship of it may offer a provocative allegory of the writer's role under an autocratic regime.Roman, L., & Roman, M. (2010).
Arachne meanwhile chose to include several tales of male gods tricking and deceiving women by assuming other forms instead of their own. She depicted Zeus transformed into: a bull for Europa, an eagle for Asteria, a swan for Leda, a satyr for Antiope, Amphitryon for Alcmene, golden shower for Danaë, flame for Aegina, a shepherd for Mnemosyne, and a snake for Persephone. Poseidon transformed into a bull for Canace, Enipeus for Iphimedeia, a ram for Theophane, a horse for Demeter, a bird for Medusa, and a dolphin for Melantho. Apollo transformed into a shepherd for Issa, and further as a countryman, a hawk, and a lion on three more obscure occasions, Dionysus as 'delusive grapes' for Erigone, and finally Cronus as a horse for Philyra. The outer edge of the tapestry had flowers interwoven with entangled ivy.Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.103-128
Meanwhile, the earliest written attestation of a spider who clashed with Minerva comes courtesy of Virgil, a Roman poet of the first century BCE who wrote that the spider is hated by Minerva but did not explain the reason why.Virgil, Georgics 4.246 ff Pliny the Elder wrote that Arachne had a son, Closter (meaning "spindle" in Greek), by an unnamed father, who invented the use of the spindle in the manufacture of wool.Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.196
In a rarer version, Arachne was a girl from Attica who was taught by Athena the art of weaving, while her brother Phalanx was taught instead martial arts by the goddess. But then the two siblings engaged in incestuous intercourse, so Athena, disgusted, changed them both into spiders, animals doomed to be devoured by their own young.Patricia B. Salzman-Mitchell (2025). 9780814209998, Ohio State University Press. . ISBN 9780814209998
The satirical writer Lucian, around the second century AD, wrote in his work The Gout that the "Maeonian maid Arachne thought herself Athene's match, but she lost her shape and still today must spin and spin her web".
Dante Alighieri uses Arachne in Canto XVII of Inferno, the first part of The Divine Comedy, to describe the horrible monster Geryon. "His back and all his belly and both flanks were painted arabesques and curlicues: the Turks and Tartars never made a fabric with richer colors intricately woven, nor were such complex webs spun by Arachne."Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Volume 1: Inferno. Canto XVII, lines 15-18 (pp. 223-224). Translated by Mark Musa.
The tale of Arachne inspired one of Velázquez' most factual paintings: Las Hilanderas ("The Spinners, or The fable of Arachne", in the Prado), in which the painter represents the two important moments of the myth. In the front, the contest of Arachne and the goddess (the young and the old weaver), and in the back, an Abduction of Europa that is a copy of Titian's version (or maybe of Rubens' copy of Titian). In front of it appears Minerva (Athena) at the moment she punishes Arachne. It transforms the myth into a reflection about creation and imitation, god and man, master and pupil (and therefore about the nature of art).
It has also been suggested that Jeremias Gotthelf's nineteenth-century novella, The Black Spider, was heavily influenced by the Arachne story from Ovid's Metamorphoses. In the novella, a woman is turned into a venomous spider having reneged on a deal with the devil.
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